


Garnet

by wheel_pen



Series: Loose Gems [19]
Category: Original Work, The West Wing
Genre: M/M, Slavery, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A runaway slave with a deep bond to his master contemplates returning home. Later, a new ambassador waits in the West Wing. Also, a partial news article about the nation known as the Crimson Tower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things.  
> Inherent in slavery and other forms of subjugation are dubious consent, unhealthy relationships, and violence.  
> I hope you enjoy this original work, which was inspired by many different stories.  
>   
> Visual reference:  
> Garnet--Lee Williams  
> Cosmin--Vincent Perez

_A hotel in Washington D.C._

Garnet was dreaming about his _padrone_ , dreaming that they were together again somehow, curled in each other's arms, warm and safe. He frequently had dreams like that, even after all this time, but always he awoke cold and alone--or worse, in the arms of someone else, whom he was immediately repulsed by. Today was no different--as his consciousness began to come back, he realized he was alone, curled on an unfamiliar couch, the apartment of someone whose name he couldn't remember, no doubt...

But that wasn't it. The couch, the coffee table at eye level, the carpet were too nice for anyone _he_ would meet. He was in a hotel room, he began to recall, his mind still hazy, a nice hotel room he had gone to, to see...

Garnet jerked upright, forcing away the lingering sleepiness. Immediately he felt a familiar soreness he recognized right away, and he shifted around to a more comfortable position. He glanced up finally and saw Lord Velculescu, sitting in a chair at the foot of the couch, studying the latest dispatches. Garnet's dream had come true… but he was still cold and alone.

Cosmin glanced at him over the top of the electronic pad--disinterestedly, Garnet thought--then looked back at his work. Suddenly furious at himself Garnet leaped off the couch and began yanking his clothes back on. It was only when he angrily stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his jean jacket and headed for the door that Cosmin finally spoke.

"Where are you going?" There was a slight edge in his tone that Garnet bristled at.

"Away," he snapped, not looking back. "To _my_ apartment."

"Get back here." Almost instinctively Garnet paused in his tracks, despite the casualness in the statement. He swallowed hard, willing himself to keep moving for the door.

" _Get back here_." There was nothing casual about the command now, and Garnet found himself retracing his steps until he stood beside his _padrone's_ chair. Cosmin gave him a significant glance and Garnet dropped to his knees, unwilling but unable to disobey.

There was a pause as Cosmin laid aside his work and regarded the boy for a moment. "Look at you," he finally said, with some displeasure. He cupped Garnet's chin in his hand, forcing him to meet his eyes. "You're pale, you're _sick_ \--you can't eat, you can't sleep."

Garnet yanked himself free and glowered at the carpet. "People get sick here," he muttered resentfully.

"You have scars that don't heal," Cosmin continued pointedly. "You work all day and come home to no one." He caught the boy's face again, lifting it to the light. "And you look older," he added critically.

"Good!"

Cosmin ignored the outburst. "You're miserable," he concluded. "A _karutsa_ cannot survive on its own." Garnet's jaw tightened as he stared at Cosmin's boots; his anger was such he almost missed his _padrone's_ next words, which were admitted with a sigh. "And I cannot survive without my _karutsa_."

Garnet's head snapped up, his fury flooding away as he looked at his _padrone_ in the fading sunlight, really seeing him for the first time in years. He too was paler than Garnet remembered, his fierce green-brown eyes more tired. And his hands--the long, elegant, steady hands of an artist--shook, just a bit, as he lifted his cup of coffee. " _Padrone_ ," Garnet whispered, tears suddenly filling his eyes.

Cosmin waved him off. "I came here to get you," he stated matter-of-factly. "But I am not going to entice you to return with me." He sighed again. "You know how I feel about you. You know what it will be like at home. If you don't want to come with me, you had better leave." With that, he opened the dispatches again and turned his attention to them.

Garnet knelt on the carpet at his _padrone_ 's feet, confusion clogging his thoughts. What did he love about this place? He loved that he could walk down the street or through a store without people staring at him as though he were some kind of curious creature. But then that wasn't exactly true, was it? People looked at him suspiciously because they thought he was so young, or because he was with another man, or because they got a good look at his eyes.

He loved that he could have his own apartment, where he could come and go as he pleased; and he could go out to eat or to the movies or just _out_ without asking someone else first. Of course, every apartment he'd ever had was a dump, and he couldn't exactly afford to eat out or go to the movies much either. And he didn't have to ask anyone else, or even tell them, because there was no one who _cared_ where he went or what he did. Or who he did it with, which was often no one. Was it really independence if no one wanted you in the first place?

But someone _did_ want him. Someone loved him more than anything else in the world, enough to bind the two of them together for the rest of their lives. Enough to put up with the stares and whispers himself. Enough to let him run away and play at independence for a few years. And enough to come after him.

Garnet was crying now, tears spilling over his dark eyes. He _was_ miserable, tired and sick and lonely, but could he go back--could he go back when, as his _padrone_ said, he knew what it would be like? He would eat under the table. He would be looked down upon by some. He would only rarely--if ever--go anywhere by himself. But he would have his friends, and a nice place to live, and he would have his _padrone_. If he went back, was he returning to his place in the world, or was he giving up?

He was sobbing so hard he didn't even realize Cosmin had moved until he reached down and pulled the boy onto his lap. "Shhh, shhh, my angel," he told him, arms tight around the boy's thin frame. Garnet buried his face against the deep red velvet of Cosmin's jacket. " _Meu înger_ , _mea comoar, mea frumusee_..." The more comforting endearments Cosmin murmured, the worse Garnet felt. He could leave, he told himself, he could leave tomorrow, today even, he had nothing to pack, no one to say good-bye to, and by tomorrow, or the day after, they could be stumbling through the door to their apartment, collapsing into the warm, soft bed... " _Meu karutsa, meu_ _rsfat_..."

Gradually Garnet calmed down a bit, though he still hadn't made his decision yet. Or maybe his decision was to do whatever his _padrone_ wanted. Cosmin brushed his hair away from his damp face and gave the boy an encouraging half-smile--at which Garnet's eyes filled with tears again. "Angel," Cosmin sighed with some exasperation, but his hold on the boy didn't waver.

Finally Garnet was down to just a few sniffs, but he stayed curled on Cosmin's lap. He was so comfortable...maybe _this_ was where he was supposed to be. Frankly, he didn't know, but he felt more at home than he had in a long time. There was only one thing that could improve the situation. " _Padrone_?" he questioned with a sniff.

"Hmmm?"

"Are you hungry?"

Cosmin chuckled; Garnet could feel his body move along with it. "Are _you_ hungry, my pet?" Garnet nodded against his chest. "Well, how do we go about getting food around here?"

"Room service."

"Ah. Well, you'd better call them, then," Cosmin decided, relaxing a bit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new ambassador waits in the West Wing.

“Josh!” Donna poked her blond head around the doorway to her boss’s office. “The ambassador’s still waiting for you in the Roosevelt Room!”

Josh looked up from the piles of paper on his desk. “How long’s he been there?” he asked, trying to file something in one of the wobbling stacks.

“Almost half an hour,” she told him. “He’s very nice. I feel bad making excuses.”

Josh frowned at her and started to stand. “Have you been _talking_ to him?” he said sharply, digging a folder out of his desk. He glanced at its contents, then discarded it and tried another.

Donna sighed, pulled a folder out of a completely different pile, and handed it to Josh. “I brought him some tea,” she reported. “He called me ‘my dear.’ He has a very sexy accent.”

Josh gave her a look that clearly expressed how unnecessary he found that last bit of information. “He’s not an ambassador anyway,” he pointed out as he left his office. “He’s a representative. That’s different.”

Donna merely rolled her eyes and went back to work. Josh turned down the hallways, mentally calling the information for this meeting up to the desktop. Frankly he considered this a fairly minor concern and felt his time could be better spent elsewhere. This country or dominion or whatever it was had made it pretty clear that it wanted nothing to do with the outside world, so he wasn’t even sure why they wanted a meeting in the first place.

When he finally opened the French doors to the Roosevelt Room, however, he put on a friendly smile. The smile was returned by the lone figure waiting inside, a late 30ish man with short dark hair—who appeared to be wearing some sort of red velvet suit coat. Josh almost wanted to say “frock coat” or “smoking jacket” or something like that, but then Donna would accuse him of frequenting Merchant-Ivory movies.

“Hi, I’m Joshua Lyman, the Deputy Chief of Staff,” he said smoothly. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

“No, no,” the man insisted courteously. “When running a government of this magnitude, it is not surprising that things”—he thought for a moment—“come up.” He gestured towards the ancient little hard-bound books gathering dust on a shelf; one of the volumes was open on a nearby table. “And I was just reading one of these marvelous books you have set out, about the history of the Panama Canal. Quite fascinating.”

“I didn’t realize anyone actually read those,” Josh confessed.

The man smiled as he wiped a bit of dust off one book. “Yes, they do seem to be rather… undisturbed.” He shook his head suddenly and held his hand out to Josh. “Please forgive me, I forget my manners. Americans like to shake hands.” Josh obliged him. “I am Lord Cosmin Velculescu, representative to the United States from the Crimson Tower.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Josh responded formally.

Lord Velculescu picked up the book he’d been reading and replaced it on the shelf. “Your history is so interesting to me, Mr. Lyman,” he remarked, “the way you have influenced so many important events in the world. I’m afraid our little country is not used to influencing its own neighbors, let alone anyone else.”

Josh gestured for them to sit down at the long wooden table. “Well, your ‘little country’ certainly gave us all a scare last spring,” he pointed out.

Lord Velculescu settled himself gracefully in the carved chair. “Oh, that was hardly our fault,” he dismissed, waving it away with a hand. “And extremely unlikely to be repeated. Our Count has his beloved, the World Court has Janis, and you have his nuclear warhead.”

Josh smiled. “It was a h—l of an introduction, though.”

Lord Velculescu returned his smile politely. “Quite.”

There was a pause, then Josh continued, “So, Lord Velculescu, I guess we were just wondering…”

“Why exactly I am here?” the other man finsiehd with a smile. “What the strangers from the Transylvanian Alps could possibly want?”

“Something like that,” Josh admitted.

Lord Velculescu seemed to gather his thoughts a moment before leaning across the table. “I have come to inform you,” he began carefully, “that our ruler, the Dowager, is thinking very seriously of retiring. This would elevate Count Nicodim to her position.”

Josh quickly ran through what little he (or anyone) knew of the Crimson Tower’s politics, and he came up empty on the great significance of this event. “Well—“ he began uncertainly.

“I would not expect,” Lord Velculescu continued, “a great and powerful nation such as yours to take much notice of our small dominion. And we have, for most of our history, preferred it that way. But the Count is… unusual,” he added tactfully. “He has traveled extensively, which our citizens rarely do. And he has made it known that when he comes to power, he wants the Crimson Tower to have a much more open relationship with the rest of the world.”

“Open relationship?” Josh repeated, realization slowly trickling in.

Lord Velculescu leaned back and crossed his legs casually. “I know it is no great matter to your country, but my mission is to inform each government personally and establish contacts for future exchange—goods, culture, information.”

Josh smiled, a little smarmily perhaps. “You’re visiting the governments of _every_ country? To tell them this?”

“No, no,” Lord Velculescu replied calmly. “Just the ones in North and South America. Other representatives have been dispatched to the other continents.”

“Well, good then,” Josh commented. He scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and began to gather up his things. This meeting was going to be much shorter than he’d thought. “I will have my assistant get you the names of some people in the Department of Trade and of Foreign Affairs who can help you set things up.” He started to stand. “Tell the Count that the President wishes him well, and it was very nice to meet you—“ At this point, Josh noticed that Lord Velculescu wasn’t standing; he was sitting in the same relaxed pose, gazing on Josh with a bemused expression.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A partial news article about the Crimson Tower.

I can easily spot Lord Cosmin Velculescu, the subject of my interview, as I approach the little sidewalk café on a cobblestone lane in the Crimson Tower’s capital city. He’s tall and trim, with darkly handsome looks reined in by his closely-cropped hair and formal, slightly old-fashioned clothes; and he has a quiet, commanding air that elicits respect—and a little bit of nervousness. Also, it doesn’t hurt that he’s the only person at the restaurant.

It’s the first day of the Crimson Tower week, the day of worship for its prevalent native religion, and all around me bells toll from the city’s multitude of ornate, Gothic cathedrals. Most shops are closed, because either the owners or the majority of their customers are otherwise occupied with religious matters. “But I am not particularly religious,” Lord Velculescu pointed out, with a disarming smile. “And neither is Gheorgi”—the owner of the café, who comes for my order—“so we keep each other company on these mornings.”

Gheorgi’s little café is, in fact, the only commercial establishment in the country to own a commissioned painting by Lord Velculescu, one of the most respected artists in the nation—a huge mural depicting a harrowing scene from a popular fable about a princess whose head was attached to her body only by a jet-black ribbon. Remove the ribbon and… the disembodied head upturned beside a stone bench in the final panel is disturbingly realistic, as are the lifeless bodies of the princess and her inquisitive lover, who kills himself upon realizing what he’s done by pulling the ribbon loose.

“The funny thing,” Lord Velculescu tells me as we examine the work, “is that in the next part of the story, the princess’s maid ties her head back on, and she lives again. So the lover really didn’t need to kill himself.” He smiles a little—decapitated princesses and the suicidal men who love them are, apparently, an old joke in this society, which combines ostentatious décor with morbid humor in a way that would make any Goth proud. “One of Gheorgi’s daughters requested it—this was her favorite story when she was younger.” The moral of the fable, as Lord Velculescu phrases it, perfectly encapsulates the romantic, tragic culture of the Crimson Tower: “Losing your head is not as final as losing your heart.”

Ask almost anyone in the country about Velculescu—especially anyone in the art world—and you will hear comments bordering on the reverential. A scholar at the Royal University calls him “the master of this artistic age;” a rising young talent confesses that he’d plastered his childhood bedroom walls with prints of Velculescu’s paintings and sketches.

The artist himself laughs these compliments off with the pleased but modest air of one who has heard them many times before. “They only say such things because I have been around for so long,” he insists, though he doesn’t look a day over forty. “And because I have been fortunate in my patrons.”

That would be the royal family of the country, who have employed Velculescu for “many years” as their official artist—and as the head of the country’s most prestigious art school, located within the royal castle. Velculescu has about two dozen students, ranging from seven to seventeen years of age, each hand-picked after a vigorous application process.

“I enjoy working with the students,” he says, sipping the national drink, a coffee served quite strong and black with a shot of flavor (hazelnut, in this case). “The young people always have such fresh ideas, such unique perspectives. It brushes the dust off the old masters, to see them discovered by a new generation.”

Velculescu has yet another job, the one that has put his name in the official documents of multiple countries: he is, at the moment, the Crimson Tower’s diplomatic representative to all the nations of North and South America. This seemingly monumental task he waves off as well. “His Majesty [current ruler Prince Nicodim] asked me to do it as a little favor,” he shrugs, “to visit the governments, introduce ourselves properly after that first incident.”

“That first incident” is the reason why the name of the Crimson Tower might stick in your mind, particularly if you’re a resident of Detroit: that city was threatened with nuclear annihilation two years ago, when a small-time Eastern European warlord didn’t like the idea of his niece, Jessenia, and then-Count Nicodim hanging out there together. These days, the warlord is in custody, the nuclear weapon disarmed, and Jessenia wife and Princess to Nicodim. But one can see how a “hello” like that ought to be followed up by a quieter, more conventional messenger.

Not that much about Velculescu would appear conventional, even to people in his own country who see tight black trousers and knee-length red velvet jackets on bankers and librarians every day. Though he claims to be conservative—“Ask any of my friends, I never drink, go out, or listen to loud music”—he has a long history of courting controversy through everything from his religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to his political stance (as an active advocate of the Prince’s warily-regarded plans to “open up” the isolated country to the rest of the world) to his personal life.

The controversial part of his personal life comes sidling up to the table a few minutes later, with the sheepish gaze of one who has slept longer than everyone around him. Sandu is slender, slight, pale, with golden-brown hair and the delicate, almost feminine face of an angel—an effect countered only by his blazing, ink-dark eyes. It isn’t the fact that they are two men engaged in an intimate relationship which makes him controversial; that sight is common enough around the country. And it isn’t the fact that he’s at least twenty years younger than Velculescu, either, which is also not unusual here. It’s that Sandu belongs to a small, poorly understood caste called the _karutsa_ , whose members—and their lovers—are often viewed with suspicion and even contempt. Why exactly is difficult to explain to outsiders, though Velculescu has spent the past year attempting to do so to foreign journalists.

“It always comes back to the sex,” he sighs when the topic is broached. Sandu pretends to be engrossed in the morning paper. “People quickly tire of the politics. And they don’t understand [my] art because they are not of this culture. But as for _karutsas_ —many people _within_ this culture do not understand them, so how can someone from another?”

As near as I can determine, from various interviews and research, a _karutsa_ is more a lifelong companion than the youthful “sex slave” some early reports suggested; yet the social stigma seems to derive from the fact that _karutsas_ are expected to be “kept” by their lovers, dominated by them, as opposed to being the fair-and-equal partners prized in other relationships in the Crimson Tower. Even during this interview, Sandu never speaks to me unless spoken to first, and is careful to draw little attention to himself. When asked if Sandu could ever leave him, moves to his own apartment, get a job, Velculescu’s answer is swift, firm, and quiet: “No.”

But if you talk to enough people, you learn that this _did_ happen once, not too long ago, and is in fact an infamous scandal—Sandu apparently “ran away,” as many put it, to America. And many on the isolationist side of the fence believe this is what _really_ prompted Prince Nicodim’s new policy of “openness.” Claims one government official—off the record, of course—“Velculescu just wanted to go to America to get his boy—but he had to convince the Prince it would be good for the whole country, to get his permission.”

The smile Velculescu gives when this quote is repeated to him makes me very glad I didn’t come up with the idea on my own. “I know who said that,” he tells me, with a chilling confidence. I almost feel like calling in a warning to my source. “I’ve heard it before,” he continues, relaxing a bit. The rumors are easy enough to shoot down as false, he claims, but the difficulty is getting them to _stay_ down. The reason Nicodim was even _in_ Detroit two years ago? He was touring with his Goth-punk band, also called the Crimson Tower (now fronted by his younger sister, Ruxandra). “The Prince has spent _years_ traveling all over the world” with his band, Velculescu points out, a highly unusual inclination for the generally homebody citizens. “He knew he wanted the country to join that world long before there were—any other considerations.”

Velculescu also seems to have some streak of wanderlust. Before his tour of the Americas, he was frequently sent as the Crimson Tower’s representative to various Annalian League gatherings. “It was always a struggle to find someone to send,” Velculescu laughs, “because nobody wanted to leave the country.” Then one day, the Dowager—Nicodim’s aunt and the country’s previous ruler—asked “her naïve court painter,” as he puts it, to fill the role at an international conference. “I didn’t accidentally declare war on anyone,” he says modestly, “so they kept asking me to do it again.” Velculescu estimates that he’s been to “at least half” of the Annalian League nations, as well as several European, Asian, and African countries in which League conferences have been held—which puts him several thousand skymiles ahead of almost everyone else in the Crimson Tower.

When asked why his countrymen seem to avoid the outside world, Velculescu shrugs, as if to say there’s no help for it. “It’s a superstitious country,” he says, “full of murky mysticism. Like this, you see?” He waves his hand to indicate the empty tables at the café. “Everyone must go to church every week, or something bad will happen to them. The evil spirits will come from the woods and get them.” His smile shows exactly what he thinks of _that_ threat. “So how much worse would it be to cross the boundaries of the Crimson Tower, to enter the world that is so unlike ours, down to the very air we breathe?”

It’s difficult to describe, but I know what he means—the atmosphere in this country is completely different from any I’ve ever visited. There’s a unique smell that permeates everything, a mixture of coffee and incense and rain, but there’s also something else, something almost… mystical. And definitely murky.

Ask Velculescu what makes him different from those around him, however, and he shrugs as though uninterested in contemplating it. When pressed, however, he reveals that it leads straight back to the topic he’d most like to avoid. Even from an early age, he says, he had a less-than-traditional attitude, but he didn’t know what caused it—“until I met my _karutsa_ , and then I understood why. I was never meant to marry, have children, settle on a country estate. Why should anything else I do be ordinary?”

Back to this _karutsa_ thing, then. Velculescu politely stifles a sigh. He says he met Sandu in Moscow—“Most _karutsas_ are foreigners, or their _padrones_ [partners] are, which is another reason some people distrust them”—when the latter was just a child, perhaps eight years old, and brought him back to the Crimson Tower to be a pupil in his school. Sandu, in a rare instance of speaking when he hasn’t been spoken to, swiftly points out that there was no sexual relationship until he was “older.”

When asked his current age, however, he glances nervously at Velculescu, who replies firmly, “We don’t talk about age in this country, the way you do—it’s only for children. And he isn’t a child anymore.”

The available information and research about _karutsas_ is surprisingly thin, as if it has always been a topic most people preferred to avoid. No one knows, for example, why _karutsas_ and their companions seem to be incapable of having children (in heterosexual pairings), a curious but consistent biological phenomenon…

**

“I am not _particularly_ religious,” Velculescu repeats, “certainly not like those who go to church every week or who leave out food for the spirits. But there _are_ a few things I believe in. Zeitate Stea, for one”—roughly, Star Goddess, their Supreme Being—“and the Messengers.” That refers to the characters of legend found commonly in almost all Annalian League nations, for whom the League is named—Annalia herself, and her female companion whose name varies by culture. Here, she’s known as Kissenia, and together the two have obtained saint-like religious status as the “bringers of light and peace” to a dark, chaotic region. “In other countries of the League,” Velculescu says, “Annalia and her companion are seen as mistress and slave, lovers, parent and child. Here, we believe that they were _all_ those things—that they were _padrone_ and _karutsa_.”


End file.
